Introduction
Few debates attract as much attention as the controversy regarding the loss employment due to the advancement of technology. Numerous factors are studied as the reasons for anxiety in labor markets. Two main challenges facing American jobs are using robots and high immigration rates. Each of the two factors has its supporters and opposers depending on their view. Jill Lepore, a staff writer for New Yorker and professor of history at Harvard University, in her article, “Are Robots Coming for Your Job,” explores various scholars’ views on this employment issue. Her essay was published in the US in 2019 as a weekly issue based on automation and robots. Lapore summarizes the main points of different authors who have written on the impact of automation on jobs. Overall, Lepore succeeds in persuading the audience of the importance of automation via using exhaustive evidence, but she fails to portray convincing future of the US due to flawed interpretation of American economic capabilities.
Summary
Lapore’s thesis is that the public perception of automation-driven threat to employement has basis, but neither society nor government are prepared to adequately manage the consequences of technological change. Unlike the old blue-collar robots, the new white-collar robots have come with more complexity and knowledge, enabling them to take advanced jobs. The author shows that the new robots are more sophisticated and advanced to take on modern jobs. In “The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future Work,” Richard Baldwin states that modern robotics are like immigrants from other countries who come to steal jobs without physically crossing the border (Lepore). According to Lapore, unlike the transformation from the agricultural to the industrial economy, which was slow, the current automation is accelerated, leaving no time for new job creation. Based on this thesis, the author demonstrates that a quick shift of jobs will not give enough time for adjustment. Besides, there will be no new job employment sectors because robots can do almost everything; hence people will become jobless (Lepore). This shows that in the future, there is a need for quick innovation to develop new job sectors, which will have to accommodate the jobless people or come up with a compensation package as suggested by Elon Musk.
Assessment of the Source
Leport has successfully passed her main point to the audience and achieved her purpose of showing how automation may threaten the current jobs. Being an editor at the New Yorker, the author commands some level of professionalism demonstrated in her work which has a logical and formal flow of ideas. She starts by addressing how automation will affect the current jobs and finishes by showing how different approaches by former US presidents Barack Obama and Trump have impacted robots (Lepore). Although the author’s thesis was based on supporting that robots are likely to affect human jobs, she did not show any bias when presenting contradicting opinions. However, one of the weak points of the article is that she interprets other people’s texts from a political view by comparing robots to immigrants. The author has shown that some careers such as consultancy have essentially finished the role of executives in companies. This is a political point of view because consultancies operate independently from companies and are only called when there is a need for external services.
Response to the presentation
Overall, Lepore presents a convincing argument that automation is inevitable and that the world should be ready to change, yet the implications for society proposed by her can be disputed. Lepore writes: “history shows that the economy has consistently adjusted to advancing technology by creating new employment opportunities and that these new jobs often require more skills and pay higher wages”. However, the rationale behind the author’s belief that automation is so fast that there will be no time for creating new sectors is flawed. Automation is created and sponsored by governments that are interested in preventing sudden economic disturbances, such as disbalances between the rate of automation and the creation of new jobs. Andre Van Hoorn, an economic analyst, has written a paper titled “Automatability of Work and Preferences for Redistribution”, in which he analyses the government’s role in redistributing individuals who are at risk of unemployment due to automation. Van Hoorn argues that “automation anxiety affects citizens’ economic and social policy preferences, transforming the political landscape and pushing governments into action” (133). This implies that there will still be enough time to develop new innovations to replace the jobs taken by robots. The author herself quotes Elon Musk’s “proposal to pay the C people [workers at risk of being replaced by robots] for doing nothing, in order to avert the revolution” (Lepore). She admits the existence of scenarios predicting that automation will create more jobs and different sectors, yet adopts a negative viewpoint of the future of labor market nonetheless.
Another inconcsitency in Leprone’s reasoning is her apparent negative outlook on the future of the US in the world, which is being changed by technology. Although automation does threaten to replace human labor, America is one of the world’s largest technological hubs. Jaures Badet, a researcher of the use of robotics in the economy, has published a study “AI, Automation and New Jobs” dedicated to the analysis of advantages of automation for the job market. A key point of Badet’s study is that “intensive automation will lead to the replacement of low-level jobs and the creation of new jobs that require high skill levels” (2459). Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the US will actually benefit from advanced automation due to the creation of new jobs. Leprone could have have provided a futuristic view of how technology through automation is likely to affect people under the risk of losing employment. It would be useful to predict the number of people who would have to be paid in the future based on the current population and the governments’ “preferences for redistribution” emphasized by Van Hoorn (131). Governmental willingness to redistribute workers who will likely lose employment due to technological change should also be accounted for. Not only would such a prognosis have utilized current statistics, but it would also have provided a concrete scenario of how the consequences of automation could be managed.
Conclusion
Accentuating a problem does not require as much effort as outlining solutions and predictions, which Lepore’s article attempts to accomplish, but is ultimately undermined by logical inconsistenices. The author’s main idea is that automation will lead ot the loss of jobs in the future due to unpredictability, complexity, and speed of automation. There is no arguing that automation is inevitable and has to be properly adressed. However, the argument would have been more convincing had the author supported her viewpoint by providing a more detailed futuristic prediction which would highlight the approximate number of jobs that would be lost. Furthermore, America’s status as a technological hub does not support Leprone’s negative prospect on the future of the US labor market. The author’s major mistake is the assumption that the government does not understand the full extent of the threat, which devalues their regulating capacities. Although the existence of risks to the future of the US labor market can not be disputed, the belief that US is not capable of managing the consequences is unfounded.
Works Cited
Badet, Jaures. “AI, Automation and New Jobs.” Open Journal of Business and Management, vol. 09, no. 05, 2021, pp. 2452–2463.
Lepore, Jill. “Are Robots Competing for Your Job?”The New Yorker, 2019, Web.
Van Hoorn, Andre. “Automatability of Work and Preferences for Redistribution.” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, vol. 84, no. 1, 2022, pp. 130-157.